President Obama repeated a claim Tuesday he has previously made that some teenagers can more easily purchase handguns than computers or books during his speech at a memorial service for five Dallas police officers murdered last week.

Obama blamed much of the tension between minorities and police on a number of different political issues, including access to guns.

“So much of the tensions between police departments and minority communities that they serve is because we ask the police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves,” the president said. “As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs.”

“We flood communities with so many guns that is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book,” he added.